


[Working Title] The Sho-chan and Tsu-kun Show

by Night-Mare (Aoife)



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Flame Active Character(s), Gen, Manga Sawada Nana, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Third Person Limited, Sawada Nana's A+ Parenting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-10
Updated: 2018-02-07
Packaged: 2019-02-13 03:08:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12974538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aoife/pseuds/Night-Mare
Summary: Sho-chan and Tsu-kun were friends, even before the Seal; things ripple from there.





	1. Prologue (Pre-Canon)

Even his kaasan has started calling him Dame-Tsuna; and he was Dame. He couldn't stop falling over things and messing up since his tousan and his tousan's Boss's last visit. The only person who hadn't called him Dame-Tsuna at this point was Sho-chan, and that was probably only because he hadn't seen Sho-chan since what he was calling the Dame-Cold had happened.

He'd tried to cling onto his kaasan's leg when she'd left him in the play area while she went to the shops, but she wouldn't let him. Now he was stuck, sat at one edge of the play area because no-one else wanted Dame-Tsuna to play with them, and Hibari-senpai wasn't here to enforce order, so he didn't even see the point in _trying_ to join in any of the games; he didn't want to get pushed over again, or for something worse to happen.

The flash of red hair - unusual in Namimori, and something that Sho-chan had been teased for in the past - attracted his attention. He called out the other boy's name, hoping sincerely that he wasn’t going to be rejected by him, too. "Sho-chan!" Sho-chan's head snapped round, and he saw the smile on the red-head's face … he scrambled up from where he was sitting, and ran to hug the redhead, only to trip over thin air, and everyone else started laughing at him. He half expected that Sho-chan would start ignoring him - he’d just proven he was dame-Tsuna after all, and Sho-chan's kaasan had insisted that he go to the private elementary school, so he had to have better friends by now. Friends who weren't Dame. He burst into tears; his knee hurt and it was bleeding and he was fed up of being teased, and his kaasan wasn't even there to kiss it better, and when she got back she'd just call him Dame-Tsuna for falling over again, and it wasn't _fair_. Something had changed with the Dame-Cold and he didn't know how to fix it!

"Shh. S'okay, Tsu-kun. My kaasan has plasters in her bag." Sho-chan hadn't ignored him! He'd knelt down and wrapped him in a hug instead, and the butterflies in his belly fluttered as the slightly smaller boy helped him limp over to where the parents were. His kaasan had left him there while she went to the shops - despite his begging to be allowed to come, she'd laughed and said that it would be quicker this way - but Irie-san was reading something in what looked like English, maybe, and keeping one eye on Sho-chan. She cleaned up his knee, and put a plaster on it, and then smiled a little sadly and pulled a familiar volume of one of the mangas he liked out of her handbag.

"Why don't you and Tsu-kun read under that tree, Sho-chan? I doubt Tsu-kun will want to run around with a sore knee." He goes pink; he's been struggling with his kanji, and he recognises so few of them compared even to his classmates, but he supposes he can look at the pictures. And neither she nor Sho-chan had called him Dame-Tsuna. For that he could _try_.

It's hard to read the manga, even if it's one he likes, but with Sho-chan leaning over the book with him, he's warm, and he can ignore the other kids in the play area, and the longer he's there with Sho-chan in his own world, just them and the manga, the easier it's getting to remember his kanji and actually _read_ , until it's almost fun. He actually pouts when his kaasan comes back for him, laden with shopping bags, and Irie-san makes a disapproving noise when his kaasan calls 'Dame-Tsuna' to summon him. Sho-chan on the other hand feels like the really harsh, hot sun that makes him want to hide for a fraction of a section before hugging him again. "Not Dame, Tsuna. And it's mean to call you that. Won't do it. _Won't_."

He trails behind his kaasan on the way home, feeling a little bit happier, but his kaasan ruins that when she says "It was so cute to see my Dame-Tsuna with such a smart friend! Sho-chan must be very kind; I saw him wearing a private school uniform last week!" (He hides under his bed with another volume of the manga he'd been reading with Sho-chan, and bursts into tears when his ability to read it slips from his grasp.)

* * *

"Kaasan, I think Tsu-kun is _really_ struggling with his kanji. But he's embarrassed about it." Tsu-kun had missed a couple of nuances in the manga they'd bent over, and he'd been much slower reading it than he had, but he missed Tsu-kun, so he hadn't said anything or been impatient with the brunette. He'd just made a mental note of the one or two kanji he needed to check himself, and waited for Tsu-kun to be done with each page before turning it. His friend had gone from 'feeling' embarrassed to leaning into him for support, and that had made him feel all warm and fuzzy, and even more determined to help him. (Even at _his_ school, there were people who teased him for being part-gaijin or part-kitsune - his hair being their reasoning - and his glasses, so Tsu-kun's easy acceptance of him was something he wanted to _keep_.)

"I know he blushed earlier when I offered the two of you the manga to read, but what makes _you_ say that, Sho-chan?" He explained, and she listened, her head tilted slightly, and nodded thoughtfully. "He might not want help, Sho-chan. You know that, right?" He nodded. "But you want to know what to do to help, if he'll let you." He nods again, impatient. "You're a good friend to him, sweetheart. You're at different schools, so I'm going to suggest a little white lie, okay?" He nods for a third time, beginning to feel like one of those silly nodding dogs that he saw in the American movies he watched with his kaasan. "Sound the kanji out out loud, Sho-chan, and trace them with your finger. If he asks why, tell him your practising for reading in class, because you've started studying hmm … poetry. It'll allow him to follow along without it being a chore."

She gives him a hug, and he gets all of his favourites for dinner, much to his sister's annoyance. She complains, but their kaasan shuts her down by explaining that he'd 'earned' his favourites and she was welcome to do the same, which just leaves her pouting.

... he tests out his kaasan's suggestion in the park the next day, and while Tsu-kun still seems embarrassed, him reading out loud does help his Tsu-kun's reading comprehension, but he's confused when Tsu-kun tells him what happened after he got home. That he'd gotten cold, and he stopped even being able to reread the pages they'd read together.

He repeats Tsu-kun’s words to his kaasan, who sighs. "I need to have a conversation with a number of people, including Hibari-san, Sho-chan. It sounds like several people have failed your Tsu-kun.” She ruffles his hair, and smiles. “You’re a good friend, Sho-chan. Keep being there for him while the adults try to fix some of this, okay?”

* * *

Curling up with Sho-chan to read manga means he's warm, and between Sho-chan and Irie-san, he's doing better at his kanji. And better at everything else too - though he does notice that if he’s apart from Sho-chan for too long, everything else starts to fail - and then Irie-san offers to help him prepare for the scholarship exam for Sho-chan's school and he flails until Sho-chan bops him on his nose and tells him that yes, everyone thinks his school is a crammer because it’s one of the private schools in town, but it isn't, it's just a specialist school, and they're not just looking for people who know all their kanji, but people who can think, and Tsu-kun can _think_. (Or at least he can think when he’s around Sho-chan, and he’d be around Sho-chan all the time if he managed to get in.)

He aces the scholarship test. (He doesn't, but he doesn't find that out for years, and he insists on paying Irie-san back using CEDEF funds when he _eventually_ finds out. It serves his father right.)

Sho-chan's school is _very_ different from Nami-Junior; the teachers don't call him Dame-Tsuna, and when he struggles, Sho-chan helps him, and the teachers do to. Sho-chan even gets credit for teaching him, and there are lots and lots of hands on experiments and he _learns_ things. He’s better at reading than he once was, but the thing that helps the most was getting to try things out. And he's not Dame-Tsuna, here, and Science is _interesting_. Science makes things happen, and Science makes Sho-chan smile, and radiate sunny warmth that he wants to _keep_.

He thrives. He's still got problems with his kanji, but Sho-chan and Irie-san help with that. And he enjoys being in the lab with Sho-chan. They win Science competitions, and his kaasan fails to notice when he basically moves out and into Sho-chan's house; Sho-chan is _his_ and he doesn't like being away from him. He turns into someone he doesn’t like when they’re separated. Someone _Dame._ (The sunshine is Sun Flames, he finds out later, and they'd been Activating the tiny wisps of Sky Flames and the fragments of potential that the Seal hadn't stolen away from him. And despite _that_  Seal, they'd harmonised.)

By the time they're thirteen, they've been to Tokyo and Hong Kong and Berlin and New York with Sho-chan's competitions - Sho-chan swats him when he says they're Sho-chan's competitions, insists he wouldn't be there without him - and he's met some _very_ interesting people, and found out a _lot_ more about his father’s world than he ever wanted to know, courtesy of one of the judges. A diminutive green-haired scientist, with a pet crocodile of all things.


	2. Chapter 2

His first response to seeing Reborn trailing after his Tsu-kun is to phone Verde. The diminutive scientist - the official story on the competition circuit was that the man was a dwarf, but after Verde had realised that they were what the scientist had called Sun-and-Sky, he'd shared _some_ of the truth, including that the little pacifiers were a warning sign - _swears_ volubly in Italian when he hears that one of his colleagues is in Namimori. "I'll be there in two days, Shoichi. Do _not_ trust Reborn, and do _not_ leave Tsuna alone with him."

By the time Verde's arrives in Namimori, Reborn has shot _his_ Tsu-kun three times, and tried to force him to move back to Nana’s house twice and to attend Namimori Middle once. He's been reduced to carrying spare sets of clothes for Tsu-kun in his bag, and appealing to Hibari Kyoya to intervene in any attempts to transfer him to Nami-chuu, and he's half a step from poisoning the Sun Arcobaleno. Or at least trying to. (Liquid caffeine would be easy enough to distill in his home lab, and if he added the lethal dose for a three hundred pound man to Reborn's coffee beans, he doubted even the Sun Arcobaleno would survive it. The trick would be managing to do it _without_ Reborn managing to metabolise the caffeine; given Verde’s explanation of Flames, the man would be able to if he realized and acted quickly enough.)

* * *

"Hands off my Sky, Reborn." He debated how to deal with this; Shoichi had admitted to wanting to poison the man, but obviously hadn’t carried through given that both Shoichi and Reborn were still breathing. Personally, he’d been restricted in his options; either he skirted around the edges of Namimori, and attempted to stay far enough away from Reborn that neither of their pacifiers lit up, _or_ he brazened it out. Given that Reborn was using the damn Dying Will bullets, the former hadn’t really been an option, which was why he was here, now, and Kaiman had Leon gripped carefully in his mouth.

" _Your_ Sky." Reborn _glares_ at him, itching to retrieve Leon from where he was currently being held hostage to his good behaviour. "How the hell have _you_ managed to harmonise with Tsuna; you never leave Europe, Verde? And weren’t you the one that insisted that you didn’t _want_ a Sky after Luce?” Which was true, but didn’t Reborn see that Tsuna wasn’t anything like Luce? That he was unfailingly honest, and _good_ in a way that made him _want_ to try and be good, too? There wasn’t an ounce of deception in his baby Sky’s body, unlike their snake of a former Boss.

"And if you hadn’t intruded into my business I would still be in Europe; Tsunayoshi and Shoichi have been competing internationally in a variety of disciplines for the last three years. And no, we're not harmonised. Not yet. The potential is there though; I was just looking for a less traumatic way to unSeal him, first." Reborn scowled and pointed his holdout weapon at him and he sighed. "Oh, for the love of Science, Reborn. Back off; he's got a Sun, and he’s already declared that I’m _his_ Lightning. You’re not getting rid of me."

"I'm not _looking_ for a Sky. Timoteo called in a favour." At least Reborn is being honest with him; he’s spent a very long time honing alternate uses for his Flames. He _refuses_ to be restricted to defensive ‘meat-shieldish’ techniques.

But fuck. He rarely swore, but this situation fully justified it. He’d intended to induct his boys into Flame work in another six months or so, once he’d coaxed Shoichi into a ‘consciously’ Active state rather than the instinctive level he was working at at the moment; between the two of them, they’d have then been able to work on the Seal. But Reborn wouldn’t get it if he tried to explain rationally; he let his somewhat histrionic side loose in a bid to actually get through to the man who was perfectly happy to spend most of the time masquerading as the sort of meat-headed idiot who would make a fantastic Mafia Lightning. "Damn it, _NO!_ I _refuse_ to be the fucking Vongola Lightning Guardian. And I'm not sacrificing one of the best pairs of prospective Flame Scientists I've found in _years_ to that bloody mess. Do you _want_ our curse broken?"

"Of course I do. But the Ninth has me over a barrel, Verde." He scowls at the other Arcobaleno; he’s pretty damn sure the man is trying to run a scam, but he takes the bait anyway.

"You. The World's Greatest Hitman over a _barrel_. Pull the other one; it's got bells on." He allows his sarcasm and frustration to drip into his voice.

"I have a _civilian_ family, Verde, and he knows about them. Knows where they are - had Enrico court one of of my nieces for his Set, though she was smart enough not to let him into her bed - and is perfectly happy to sell them out." Ah. He hadn't expected _that_. Not from Reborn, who he’d assumed to be an orphan, given some of the things the man had implied in the past, though it explained the lengths he had gone to distance himself from his former identities and the ease with which he changed them.

"Then we'll just have to work together. Won't we. It'll be fun; we haven't done _that_ since before that godforsaken day. I believe the Ninth still has one son left?" The funerals for Timoteo’s ‘legitimate’ children had been ostentatious and lavish, and associated with the messy public deaths of the culprits. The youngest son, his ‘natural’ child had just vanished for eight years; he doubted he was actually dead, but might need rehabilitating. He was fairly damn sure the boy could be moulded into an adequate Don, though, and that way he could keep his Sky concentrated on Flame Science. He’d intended to challenge the boys with the Lorenzini manuscripts soon; if they could figure _those_ out ...

"Xanxus is disqualified." He raises an eyebrow at Reborn’s blunt answer. Obviously he’d checked and - oh, hadn’t there been something about Viper taking a Sky ten years ago?

“Then little Timmy has been _very_ naughty; there's only one way to disqualify one from inheriting that Family. And if Xanxus _is_ ineligible, then he's been lying to the Alliance; but that’s easy enough to fix. Shamal was your protege, after all." Reborn twitches at the implications; had he _really_ not realised what the good doctor was capable of? Admittedly, the man normally used it to hide evidence of his indiscretions, but the Falco heir and heiress had made it very obvious to him what Shamal was capable of.

"That's one way to deal with the issue. How to defrost the brat would be the other part of the problem.” The choice of wording sets wheels spinning in his mind. Reborn was rarely imprecise in his choice of words, which meant that Xanxus di Vongola truly was frozen in some manner. Possibly with Flames; though cryonics was also possible. The latter would definitely be easier to deal with than the former. “Though can we at least agree to get _your_ Sky unSealed, while we're deciding what _else_ to do?”

Reborn at least sounded resigned to cooperating with him so, he nods sharply. "No more of those fucking bullets of yours." He pulled a container out of his pocket. "Now you've cracked the Seal these should allow Tsunayoshi to work past it; you'll find he's very practically minded." Reborn took the container and looked at them quizzically. "They're pills for Flame Actives. I reproduced your bullets in pill form, Reborn, and removed those two little side effects you so enjoyed inflicting on the little Cavallone. I was just waiting for an opportunity to give them to Tsunayoshi; not everyone is as well equipped to handle your sadism as the baby Sky that you've already broken to the harness was. "

"You ruin _all_ my fun." He wanted to snort at the petulant edge to the Sun’s voice.

"One of us has to _pretend_ to be a responsible adult." Poking Reborn is actually remarkably entertaining, which bodes well for their enforced proximity over the next few months. Perhaps if he spends enough time prodding him, the brilliant mathematician that hid behind the hitman might come out to play more often?

"And I'm not?" He gave in and actually snorted. The Sun Arcobaleno was incorrigible, and he had left that opening for him.

"I’ve seen you train more than one protege, Reborn. You haven’t been a responsible adult since before the ‘Fated’ Day; the whole Flame Mafia saw what you put Dino Cavallone through; you’re worse than Lal and Colonello when they’re training mooks.” Reborn eyes him; and he scans back through what he’s just said, and realises he’s revealed just how carefully he _actually_ observes the antics of the wider Flame Mafia, and he groans. His Cloudy tendencies were going to get him into more trouble than his Lightning Flames could get him out of. “And before you try and trick me into anything, I'm _not_ going to be the Vongola Lightning Guardian."

"We'll see." He eyed the other Arcobaleno warily, hearing the Misty undertone in the man’s voice.

He rubs his temple. "I _mean_ it. And don't you dare use those goddamn bullets on Shoichi or Spanner either; I have a major project for the three of them to work on, and I don’t need them distracted or humiliated by you."

"You ruin _all_ my fun. Verde."

"He still needs a Mist, a Storm and a Cloud. I'm not denying you permission to torment _them_."

Something in the other Arcobaleno’s body language shifts, and the Sun makes a thoughtful sound. "I've had a candidate in mind for his Storm since before I arrived, though my reasoning for choosing him has changed in the past few days; I think you'll probably even approve of him, even if he is from one of the Families. He was bright enough that he first came to my notice when I was teaching at the university last year."

"I thought you were teaching post-post-graduate last year." He poked, gently, at the Sun, wanting to keep the mathematician that had just poked his head out somewhere near the surface. If he kept Reborn talking, he could weave some of his Lightning around that aspect of Reborn’s personality and it would make him _much_ more reasonable to deal with.

"I was." That was _fascinating_ ; a teen from one of the Families, capable of keeping up with Reborn deep in maths mode had _potential_.

"We'll keep him either way, then." Reborn snorts in amusement. Like he was a little Cloudy, he was pretty sure that Reborn was at least a little bit Misty - not that it mattered, in terms of their usable Flames; the curse left them with only their Primaries, but psychologically - and the other Arcobaleno was only making it very obvious at the moment. Plans within plans within plans was a very Misty way of thinking.

"He'll arrive next week. I wanted some time to get established in Japan myself, before I added him to the mixture; he’s as volatile as most Storms are, though I suspect in his case it’s an acquired trait rather than an innate one."


	3. Chapter 3

The three teens that Reborn wants to introduce him to are all bent over a series of very old documents, babbling in four languages - only three of which he could follow - and when he concentrates, there are yellow and blue flames and very, very tiny sparks of orange flames dancing in the air around the three of them. He’s envious; the three of them look so comfortable, their Flames winding together so naturally that it sparks a craving for something he doesn’t have a name for. Hasn’t had a name for since he realised that he wasn’t safe where he was supposed to be safe.

“Reborn, I thought Verde _told_ you we were busy today.” The blunt statement comes from the brunette to whom most of the orange sparks cling; he presumes he’s the Sky that Reborn’s brought him here to meet. “You’re lucky Kaiman forced him to take a break and is currently asleep on top of him in the other room.” Leon scuttled round the Sun Arcobaleno’s fedora, at the mention of the second name and attempted to hide; he wasn’t sure why the chameleon was so terrified.

“No need to be _quite_ so grumpy, Tsunayoshi. This isn’t about training. Rather this is about a potential addition to your set?” That makes the brunette actually look up from whatever it is that the other three teens are working on.

“And I told you I wasn’t interested, Reborn. Maybe I do need a set of Guardians the way you insist, but I want companions who can keep up with me, not knuckleheaded mafioso.” He hisses at the insult and he can feel his Flames rising; he wants to throw himself at the barely Active Sky in front of him and force him to eat his words. He’s not a knucklehead! But that instinctive response was just going to prove the brunette’s point, and he shoved his roaring Flames down before he lost his last chance at a Sky..

“Given I first noticed him when i was teaching higher-level cryptography in Rome, auditing one of my lectures and keeping up, I think he might surprise you Tsunayoshi.” He preened under the praise from one of the I Prescelti Sette; he’d struggled to deal with advanced material to start with, but then his Flames had responded to his frustration and he had figured out how to use them internally to keep up. (Mostly Sun Flames, though occasionally Rain and Storm to deal with panic and mental blocks.) The Sky made a curious and pleased sound at Reborn’s admission. 

“If you’d just _told_ me he was one of _Borin’s_ protégés rather than one of yours, Reborn’s, I wouldn’t have been nearly so grumpy about meeting him.” He was flailing a little bit at the implications of the conversation that was happening in front of him; a Sky whose fascination was with research, not with holding territory of some sort (whether Land, or a Family) was rare, and would need a whole different approach. “A Flame Aware mathematician _would_ be a valuable addition to our research group.” Reborn facepalmed, suppressing his groan, and he was confused. The baby Sky grinned, and threw a paper airplane at him; he caught it reflexively - remembering training sessions with Trident Shamal - before unfolding it and smoothing it out, and his eyes lit up at the series of formulas scrawled on the sheet of paper. “What do you make of that, -” The baby Sky tilted his head, staring at him with burnt umber eyes. “- Hayato?”

His eyes flicked sideways to the Sun Arcobaleno, assuming that the man had told his new student his name, and then back to the Sky, and he started babbling about the implications of the interwoven formulas in question; that earned him a smile from the baby Sky in front of him, and the three of them made space for him around the table and his eyes widen at the insane complexity of what they were working on. He recognises fragments of the material, and he squeaks, and twists one of the Rings on his fingers, and he can’t be right, can he? Not with the ways the fragments of what he’s seeing are slotting together and he reaches for one of the pads of paper, wanting to jot down the ideas that were blooming across his mind’s eye. The redheaded Sun pushes the pad towards him, and hands him a pen, and he scribbles enthusiastically, noting his theories about what he’s seeing and cross-referencing, and he’s still twisting one of his Rings thoughtfully.

He realises he’s starving when they finally break to eat, and he looks around almost blearily, expecting to see the Sun Arcobaleno still watching over the four of them, but Reborn is long gone, and instead he’s introduced to a laughing red-headed woman, quite obviously the mother of the Sun he’s been babbling with all afternoon. She presses a large bowl of fresh ramen on him; it’s delicious.

“So I know you saw something in the manuscripts, Hayato. Do share.” Tsuna’s curled against Shoichi, and he’s not quite sure how the two of them were managing to eat their Ramen without spilling it on each other. It was _either_ a warning that the Sun had already claimed the Sky, and they had a budding relationship, in which he _wouldn’t_ be welcome, or classic bond deprivation courtesy of the Seal; he wasn’t sure which, but he would tread carefully anyway.

“Um. The surge of energy that one of the formulas in the third manuscript would require to actually work? Well, it reminded me of _this_ -” He concentrates and the Storm Ring on his thumb has a flame dancing over it which makes Spanner’s eyes go wide, and then the blonde was reaching for his own notepad.

“Experiments in the laboratory, boys; the kitchen is for eating.” Shoichi’s mother swipes both of their notepads and then pours more broth in their bowls. “And no, you may not leave the table until you’ve finished this. The four of you have been on a tear all day, and you will be incredibly cranky tomorrow if you don’t have enough to eat and drink; if it wasn’t for the fact you are quite obviously about to make a break through, I’d kick you out of the house with orders to introduce our new lodger to the neighbourhood, Sho-chan, but that can wait. Just go to bed at a reasonable hour, please; you’re due back at school tomorrow.”

“… Lodger?” The little Sky is staring thoughtfully at him.

“Yes. The tutor your father sent said if he couldn’t talk you into returning to Nana’s - and no, I don’t want you to move out, Tsu-kun - then he wanted Hayato to stay with you to help tutor you in some of the small things, like your Italian, and etiquette.” He squirmed; couldn’t Reborn have discussed this with him first? “And as we have space, I agreed.”

They return to the lab after dinner - which was delicious - and he teaches the others to summon their Flames, handing out the spare Rings he’s acquired over the years; Shoichi and Spanner can do it easily enough, producing a shimmering yellow Flame with purple sparks, and a blue one with green sparks respectively, but it’s not until Tsuna takes a pill from a small canister that he manages it. 

His cheeks heat as he realises just how much he wants those Sky Flames wrapped around his own, calming and soothing his Hurricane - the Seal hadn’t allowed him a proper ‘look’ at Tsuna’s Sky before - Shoichi definitely had a Cloud secondary, and an established bond given the way he was being glared at, and he shakes his head, pushing the lust back into a tiny box in the back of his head. It was likely it would subside once he had a bond with the Sky in front of him, anyway; it was just that he was at an age when sex _could_ be used to shore up a bond between Sky and Element. He went back to mentally flailing about the implications of the formulas, and Shoichi made an amused sound. 

“Using that much energy has _got_ to have consequences, Hayato-kun.” The question comes from Spanner, and he has to blink, and think, trying to remember the lessons on this that Shamal had given him when he was younger.

“It does; you’ll never see a ‘true’ Flame Active getting particular fat, and if you exhaust your flames, you’re at serious risk of catabolysis. You _will_ need to indulge your sweet-tooth; if you don’t, well the results are unpleasant. Alcohol works, too, but for our age group candy is the socially acceptable choice.” He favors Perugina hard candies; he’s rarely without a pocketful, but he’s going to have to figure out an alternate here. Not that’ll be a hardship, not with the range of sweets available here.

“Mmm. Just what you’ve been warned about, Hayato-kun, or is that experience talking?” Shoichi was making notes, thoughtfully, but the question had been Tsuna’s.

“Bit of both.” His Sky had the prettiest eyes, and he gets a little bit lost in the Flames in them. 

“You’re staring, Hayato-kun.” His cheeks heated, but his Sky sounded amused rather than dismissive. “I think you need to go to bed; if Japanese isn’t your first language, tomorrow’s going to be exhausting; it certainly was for Spanner. Yumei can be _very_ intense.” He grumbles slightly, but allows the Rain to steer him into the guest room, and he tumbles into bed fully dressed, ignoring the fact that his duffel bag - which he had left in the hotel room Reborn had bought for him - was at the foot of the bed. 

He doesn’t manage to sleep that well. This is a civilian house, and he’s not used to sleeping indoors any more; he finds himself prowling around the garden, only to come face to face with a robot. It herds him gently back to bed again, and he’s humiliated when it ties him to it and returns to it’s patrols. The straps are Flame resistant and he grumbles, he does fall asleep again, though.

“Didn’t Reborn warn you that we weren’t exactly civilians, Hayato-kun?” The lithe Sky had a smile on his lips when he opened the door and he pink _again_. “Verde - the Lightning Arcobaleno - has been watching over me since I was ten. The house is well secured, and there are very few people who could breach it’s walls if they are a threat.” He groans, and smacks his head back into the pillow. “Now. I know you’ve been auditing Borin’s lectures, but have you kept up with the rest of your studies?” 

"I have.” His Sky drops a uniform on the end of the bed before untying him. “There’s often a lot of time between contracts, and I was bored. Sneaking into lectures and stealing textbooks was a way to stop myself doing anything Stupid.”

“How about your Japanese, Hayato-kun?” He’d been making notes in G-script, so he supposed it was a reasonable question.

“- self-study. I have a quasi-eidetic memory, so I’ve memorised all of the kanji and kana. My birth mother was half-Japanese, so I learnt it in her honour. I need a lot more practise to smooth out my spoken Japanese, but you’ve probably been able to hear it’s improvement over even the last eighteen hours.”

“Mhmm. And I’m impressed.” His Sky (not his, yet, but he’s determined Tsuna will be his) smiles. “Yumei’s a Montessori-type school, so it’s going to be a bit different than you’re used to -” he’d been expecting to discover that Yumei was a crammer; he’d been steeling himself for endless memorisation, and long days, but a Montessori was another sort of school entirely.

“- I’ve never been to school, Tsuna. I’ve been self-taught since I ran away,” that had thrown his Sky a little bit; perhaps Reborn hadn’t shared as much information as he’d thought with Tsuna? “Before that I had tutors. If I’d stayed, I would have gone to the Academy in the next year or so, once I had Active Flames and was able to defend myself.” 

“Huh.” The sound is thoughtful. “Well, providing you pass the exams today, Yumei will allow you to set your own study plan.” Reborn could have warned him about that. He grumbled, and some of the orange motes that were what little of Tsuna’s Flames that could escape the Seal settled on his skin, calming his anxieties a bit. “Bathroom’s at the end of the hall; we’ll work you into the schedule this evening, but for now it’s yours.” He yawned and rubbed his eyes. “There’ll be sun-flame-infused coffee waiting for you downstairs, Hayato-kun.” Once Tsuna had vacated his doorway, he rushed through his morning routine, and there was indeed coffee, good coffee, waiting for him, and his jet-lag was _very_ grateful.


End file.
